Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near North Rector Rector, AR

Rector is a city in southeastern Clay County in northeastern Arkansas, set on the eastern side of Crowley's Ridge, the long ridge that rises above the Mississippi River floodplain.

Rector was platted in 1882 by the Southwestern Improvement Association, about two miles south of the older settlement of Scatterville, whose residents gradually migrated to the new railroad town on the St. Louis and Texas Railroad — the Cotton Belt line.

The town is named for Henry Massie Rector, who was governor of Arkansas when the state seceded from the Union in 1861.

Rector was incorporated on September 13, 1887.

The 2020 census counted 1,862 residents in Rector, down from 1,977 in 2010, in a compact city of about 1.36 square miles.

Rector's signature event is its Labor Day Picnic, held since 1941 and now stretching across four days, with a parade, rodeo, beauty pageants, a talent show, and gospel music at Rector Memorial Park on U.S. Highway 49.

The Labor Day celebration is also a legendary stop on the Arkansas political circuit, where generations of office-seekers have come to give speeches and court voters in person.

Local jeweler and businessman Matthew J. Motsinger founded Motsinger Park on Rose Hill, which hosted Sunday-afternoon baseball games and an annual Fourth of July picnic in the town's early decades.

Rector Central Park, at Main and Front streets, was transformed from a muddy wagon lot into a park in 1913 by the Rector Women's Club and hosted Thursday-night band concerts.

Timber harvesting and agriculture built Rector's economy, and the town maintains a community museum of donated local artifacts; the pioneer settlement that preceded it survives in the historic Scatterville Cemetery, about two miles northwest of town.